The Spirits of Language
by HayashiOkami
Summary: Aphorism Manga Fanfic. Welcome to Naraka High School, where living guarantees graduation and a prestegious government job. It's a school where physical training drills mean life or death, where students are not numbers but body bags, and where your friends are your greatest allies - if you can keep them alive.
1. The Gates of Hell Open

**The Spirits of Language**

_**- Kotodama no Monogatari -**_

_Fandom: Aphorism by Kujo Karuna_

_Under the guise of a prestigious military academy, Naraka High School is a literal hell on earth. It's a school where physical training drills mean life or death, where students are not numbers but body bags, and where your friends are your greatest allies - if you can keep them alive._

_This year starts with two hundred and thirty odd students. Unlike most years, they have large expectations to live up to - since the previous year's classes all perished, leaving no graduates. Two years before that, a mere ten students graduated._

_There is no way to escape from hell. There is only the possibility of moving forward dogmatically, confronting all that one fears, loves, and hates before it is too late._

**Chapter One: **The Gates of Hell Open

Cities were strange places inhabited by even stranger people, most of whom traversed the streets with single-minded purposes. The grey cliffs that reached into the sky, glinting in the afternoon sunlight, became monotonous even to the tourists who came from the countryside or from other lands. There were features of cities that no one paid attention to, features that no one had the patience or mind for. Street signs mattered, and so did names above businesses, but those were mundane objects.

The blatant ignorance in each focused, straightforward face was perhaps the thing he hated most about the city. The cameras on the traffic lights to catch violations, the security inside every building, and the smartly dressed people on every block, were all aspects he thought of with distaste. Since he was a small child he often tugged at his mother's blouse and peered up at the corners of stores with wide, curious eyes.

"Why're they watching us? Why are there cameras in the bathroom?" Eventually, those childish questions evolved into much darker inquiries. "Why does the government watch us every day, if not to maliciously control every aspect of our lives? Don't they simply give us some freedom, so that one day they can take all if it away without us knowing or caring? No one on the street cares that the government watches them, even in the bathroom."

Since he was not prone to arguing with his mother, as mothers won every argument regardless of the truth of the matter, Nozawa Makoto allowed these thoughts to brew in his head as he walked through the streets of Tokyo every day. He vented to his friends in junior high school, but never to the teachers, no matter how strong his desire was to speak out during class. Teachers worked for the government, after all. They were obligated to report to their superiors.

Today was a bit different, though. The sights on the street were the same, but in a different city, in Saitama. The activity was slightly different than in Tokyo, but the overall atmosphere was similar. He found it hard to imagine a city filled with more noxious gas and crowded streets than in the heart of Tokyo. Naraka was a bit calmer, less suffocating than his hometown that was actually in a residential area of the city. There was a nice park and less cars, but the trains and subways weren't far away.

It had been a fifteen minute walk to his junior high school, so staying in a dormitory with another boy would be a new experience. A private school was not on his list of reliable places to spend extended amounts of time in, but he had been practically forced to attend. His parents thought that the lack of admissions papers was brilliant, as if they didn't have faith in his academics. He just thought that it was plain stupid.

He might not have liked institutions of higher learning - like Todai* - but at least the entrance exams made sense. Still, he was enrolled, already wearing the smart, crisp new uniform of Naraka High School. There was no running back to Tokyo now, and his parents looked relieved to finally have one thing in their lives work out well. He had a feeling that they were always a little disappointed in him, but it was hard for him to fathom why.

His mother's favorite phrase, "We're proud of you no matter what," kind of confirmed that suspicion. She said it at least once every other day, so often that he had to doubt its sincerity. He always earned decent grades, but his academics were nothing special, not of the caliber necessary to enroll in an elite high school. That was why this was a miracle - his presence in Naraka City, the uniform resting on his shoulders, and his ability to see the floating island.

Along the way he had seen a few other students wearing the same grey blazer with gold accents, the girls in strangely pleated sailor uniforms. Impressive red torii gates* marked the entrance to the boarding school, a set of suited guards out front checking student IDs. The sight made him stiffen. People wore suits in the city all the time for official business, he tried to reassure himself. As long as they were unable to see his anxiety he would be fine. He had to act normal.

The sleek new identification card that came by mail gleamed in the sunlight as he withdrew it from his pocket and showed it to the guard. The man motioned him in, along with a group of five students who had just arrived. Listening as they walked across the clean campus, he caught hints of accents from at least two other provinces, deep Kansai and Kyoto dialects he had to struggle to comprehend.

It was strange how people could fall for such farces so easily. It didn't seem to matter where in the country people came from. Although he could see the floating island and his friends could not, it was nearly impossible for him to believe that the truly supernatural was at work here. When he glanced about at his future classmates, all he saw was adolescent curiosity. Either they had no suspicions at all or they were just very good at concealing it.

It unnerved him. He didn't understand how people could ignore such blatant violations of privacy and how they blindly believed strangers were looking out for them. This school, for instance, was definitely too good to be true. He was able to think that even as he entered the large gymnasium, over two hundred chairs staged in neat rows before the podium. As he tugged at the hem of his blazer, he could only think with unease that such an elegant private school would never offer free tuition to all the students attending.

He wished he could turn around and go home. Even if it were impossible to escape from the government's watchful eyes, at least he would be home, somewhere familiar. He would attend a normal public high school, never having to worry about the inner dealings of a private academy and all the politics behind one. The small shivers wouldn't crawl down his spine every time he glanced at a staff member or at his peers, all nervous and laughing teenagers.

He sat down, took a deep breath, and convinced himself that this was alright. Hundreds of first year high school students across the country attended these seminars, and hundreds of people graduated from these top facilities each year. Everything was normal. It was just his thought process that didn't belong.

It was difficult to pay attention to the speeches given by the staff. Every so often he would flinch or start when he caught movement in his peripheral vision, and he concentrated most of his energy on remaining still and unsuspicious. The person sitting to his right was busily whispering to a friend beside him, a quiet murmur in his ear not unlike the thrum of a cicada in a far off tree during the summer.

"Are you nervous?" the boy's voice whispered on his right. Makoto started badly, kicking the bottom of the metal folding chair with the new loafers that came with the crisp uniform. He pressed himself as far away from the person as possible until he deemed it safe to return to his normal position. A few students were staring at him, anyways. He hoped no one of importance had noticed.

"No, why would you think that?" he snapped back, much more defensive than he wished he sounded. A bright, unassuming smile answered him, much too simplistic for his tastes. The boy inched forward in his chair in curiosity, almost as if Makoto was an interesting creature he wandered upon on the side of the road.

"It's not that weird to be nervous today, you know. Look at everyone around us," the boy whispered, although his whispering sounded awfully harsh. He had the strangely auburn hair of idols and a thin frame. A bony hand reached out and tugged on his sleeve. "I'm Kawasaki, from Tokushima City. Who are you and where're you from?"

He was a bit put off by the incessant questions and the boy's straightforward attitude, not pausing for so much as a second to consider how overwhelmed his victim was. He waited, and then smoothly transitioned into another volley of whispers, too loud for the massive hall. The absence of an answer didn't bother him in the least. He continued to address Makoto without once wondering what to call him after his initial question. He spoke of the city here, of his hometown, and of the school.

It was a secretive school, but Kawasaki had apparently heard plenty of rumors about it. Despite the fact that they would experience everything once the orientation finished, Kawasaki insisted on informing him of all the mundane details of every day life at the school. It was a boarding school and they were usually split into five different classes. Dormitories were arranged by those divisions and they normally didn't have lessons with the others, but saw plenty of them around campus.

Makoto's head was buzzing by the time the orientation ended and Kawasaki dragged him along, to wherever the classrooms were. Huge lists were tacked onto the bulletin board where club activities posted advertisements on normal days, detailing each student's homeroom and dorm number in neat little rows.

To his relief, Kawasaki Hisoka was not his roommate, but they were in the same class, and that was a disappointment. Among his friends, Makoto was the type to rant nonstop once he actually spoke, so this amiable guy who seemed completely unable to read the atmosphere threw him off. Any normal person would take his actions as a hint and back away, except for Kawasaki. When he yanked his sore hand from the boy's grasp, he snatched it back up a moment later without a word.

The teacher for class two was a deadpan man in his mid forties or early fifties, a person better suited for an office than a classroom. He didn't bother introducing himself and left the backboard untouched. He was in the process of passing out square slips the size and consistency of origami paper when he finally addressed the class of nearly fifty students.

"You'd better not fold those pieces of paper," he drawled, each syllable longer than necessary to understand his message, if his glare didn't tell them enough. It was the type of voice that put students to sleep during lectures. "Those are your life right now. If you wish to graduate, think carefully and write a character in the center that will help you fight in battle. This is how you survive in Naraka."

Makoto instantly frowned at the innocent piece of upturned paper. It had a strange pattern printed on it, with a white center and a black border. He held it between his fingers curiously. It was a normal piece of origami paper. As a child his aunts and uncles had often occupied his time with colorful cranes and elegant turtles the size of the pad of his thumb.

He had never been academically successful enough to warrant sending him to cram school, but he had heard stories from classmates about the crazy traditions practiced there. Perhaps this was one of those activities meant to raise the students' spirits and motivate them to succeed in the upcoming school year. Alternatively, this might be a method the government used to bind them to some ridiculous contract. Or, it could be that this school just really liked metaphors.

He wondered what Kawasaki wrote, given the boy's exuberant personality.

He wondered what _he_ should write. To survive in a private school, especially a private school so closely connected to the government, he would need…

"Now, everyone, say which character you wrote aloud. It's about time to start." Makoto glanced at the teacher, a perfect owl at the head of the classroom, unblinking. The pen in his hand quivered as he pressed the tip to the thin paper, tracing out the straight angles for a set of doors and the familiar strokes of _heaven_ just as the ground beneath them shivered.

"_Gateway,_" he muttered. It was a familiar character, probably useful in whatever strange activities the school wished for its students to participate in. He had to go along with whatever the authorities wanted. It was never good to stand out too much, to oppose too loudly or strongly. So, he chose _gateway, _connecting two places or objects together. A cram school would like that - the connection of ideas and the application of such principles.

The paper fluttered, although the second story windows were sealed shut, and he had only a moment to wonder why before the white center glowed. The shock of light blinded him, and then a searing pain blossomed on his skin. He hissed, one hand unconsciously grasping at the area behind his left ear where it felt as if someone had held a match to his skin. The sensitive tissue throbbed in pain as he brushed the tiny droplets of tears from his eyes.

The first thing he saw was the teacher's thin lips, pressed into a line that twitched upwards in a cruel mockery of a smile. _It's the government dogs,_ he thought viciously, _and they've finally branded us._ It didn't matter how this occurred, because the moment after the students recovered, they realized that tremors had shook the ground beneath them. Tremors were never good.

"It's not an earthquake!" said the teacher, uncharacteristically loud. The volume startled some students. "This is what I meant by survival. Only the worthy and the strong can graduate. Go and prove what you're worth and I'll consider teaching you. Look outside the window."

Those closest shrieked and screamed a second later, and soon the whole classroom was in an uproar, whether or not they had seen the beasts outside.

Makoto's skin felt ice cold, as if he had just gone swimming without his clothes in the middle of a Hokkaido winter. This was the nightmare that plagued his nights and days for years, ever since he witnessed that undercover cop break into the house next door. He had tried to warn countless people that someday the government would resume the experiments it conducted during World War II. No one had believed him, of course, because war atrocities were not on the curriculum, and the government was better nowadays.

He had found that information on the internet. It only solidified his unease with the cameras everywhere and the constant surveillance of the largely innocent population. And now he had a searing brand on his neck and there were beasts outside, seeping out from the ground with bloody maws and ivory teeth. There were people already trying to fight them, the dusty fields splattered and cut-off screams reaching from beyond the glass. It was almost like a Western painting of a medieval battlefield.

"Go and fight," the teacher intoned in his deadpan voice. "You'll die if you stay. Perhaps you will die if you leave, but go and see what you're worth. Only those who survive can graduate."

He took a last glance outside the window, where grey-suited students were fighting, although he didn't know what they were fighting with. This school couldn't have weapons ready and on hand, could it? No normal teenager would even know how to wield one. Was this an elaborate experiment designed to test the weakness of today's youth?

Kawasaki was gone, perhaps for good. A tight hand grasped at his heart at the prospect of never seeing the annoying boy again. Besides those gunshots fired that day in his neighbor's house, he had never been in any conflict that made his heart wretch so badly. As his feet took him down the unfamiliar hallways, he ignored the screams and the light scent of copper in the air. He had not been particularly close to his neighbor, but any proper human being would feel for that pitiful little child curled up against the side of the house.

He supposed it would be too easy to shoot these monsters with guns. There was no way they could take these things with their bare hands. All he had was a pen.

Bile rose into the back of his throat as he ran through the blood splattered halls. He choked on the acid when he collided with another body, thinking for one panicked moment that it was a pale creature oozing red. It was a girl though, a tall girl with a Western saber in her hand. Makoto stumbled backwards, wordless, eyes fixated on the thin blade. What use was that against the monsters and their thick hides?

He flinched as she approached him. The sharp tip was better suited for piercing human flesh in comparison. "Where did you…?"

"It's the character you wrote!" she said quickly, glancing at the blade. "I don't know what's going on, either, but…"

The girl yanked him by the forearm with a crushing grip, but seeing as she was athletically inclined, he didn't resist. Perhaps she played softball or baseball. Makoto never played seriously and never took an interest in the traditional sports that tried to recruit in the beginning of the year, but he could run. That, he could do.

He soon overtook her in strides, but once they reached the outside, they both came to a stop. It was a mess.

He tried to shake the mist from his eyes. His parents always wanted to knock that dreamy look from his face, the one that made him walk into metal light posts and trip down the subway stairs. The girl was gone, unsurprisingly, but she had said that the character gave her a fencing sword. This time, he had no chance to question her intentions.

He was alone in this - this government experiment.

A gateway to knowledge was a cliched expression. His character had a variety of different meanings, but nothing came to mind besides "a gateway". There was no way out, no way to turn a gate into anything but a gate.

Makoto ran for the sake of running. This, he was good at - he could have been on the track and field team if he wanted to devote the time. He knew how to control his breath, how to pace himself, and to what extent his endurance ran. He jumped and pretended that the corpses beneath him were hurdles, pretended that he didn't know this would happen all along. At least he knew no one close to him here.

He slowed, feeling the muscles in his legs burning with disuse. It had become too hard to dodge the creatures at full speed, and he could only sprint at that pace for two hundred yards or so before his lungs gave out. One of the creature's many eyes twisted and swiveled, locking in on his heaving form. He was out of breath only due to panic. It opened its massive jaws and screeched, claws digging into the earth.

He shut his eyes tight and threw his arms out before him, bent at the elbows, tearing at his memories for words he saw every day. And then he remembered, remembered a character that had been with him for years and opened his eyes, no matter how frightened they were.

"H-hey, you, move!" someone shouted. It was too late, because swirls of ink spiraled forward, condensing into some half translucent shield that the monster collided into with a roar. Makoto nearly fell on his back when someone caught him from behind, and they watched for a second as the creature's jaws sparked against the barrier. _Barrier,_ he remembered with sudden clarity. It was a moment of stupidity on his part.

He allowed himself to glance behind him, at the person who caught him. Grey uniforms flashed in the corners of his eyes and as the shield shattered under the pressure of the creature's blows, a soft spray of blood flew into the air. It brushed against his face, a light breeze that smelled of copper and tickled his nose.

"Are you okay - uh, you?" Kawasaki leaned forward into his field of vision, hovering over his shoulder, still supporting his back. Makoto noticed that both of them were quivering. He nodded once and pushed himself back to his feet, eyes darting around. Two girls had arrived with him, one from before, now with a heavier sword, and the other without any weapon.

"I-I'm Nozawa, Nozawa Makoto," he informed the boy. He didn't expect the guy to have noticed his name on the bulletin board. He grimaced; there couldn't be many students left from that list. "Thanks for...for that. Do you...know what's going on?"

Kawasaki seemed to hesitate, but his eyes were constantly darting about, and the smile on his face was strained. "No, no more than you do. We're fighting now because it's the Blight. That's what one of the teachers called it. When the floating island up there moves out of the sun's way, the monsters will disappear. Until then, we can't escape. They just keep on appearing."

The four of them moved along without any further introductions, probably figuring that they could become acquaintances if they survived the first wave. As the other girl with them pointed out, these were regular occurrences in the school. Monsters were real, and their powers were real too. The lessons were to defeat any enemies that appeared and survive until next spring. It was simple. Afterwards, a graduate could get a job anywhere, just as advertised.

There were bodies draped over the bushes, in crumpled heaps on the ground. Despite her resilience, the girl with the sword had to pause to retch before tackling another creature recklessly. The other girl demanded that he cover her with his shield, despite the fact that he had been lucky to summon it in the first place. He did find that it came much easier the second time around, but it left him wondering what the other two had as powers.

It didn't last much longer - the "Blight" as Kawasaki called it. By that time, Makoto was exhausted mentally, too overwhelmed to even be wary around the black-suited adults that went around cleaning the mess up and preventing the frenzied students from leaving. He allowed Kawasaki to drag him along by the wrist, to one of the sinks in the hallway of the school. There were dazed people everywhere, as well as people who were calm and moving about their business with focused, straightforward faces.

"Clean up; blood doesn't look so good on you," Kawasaki said helpfully as he tore off a strip of paper towels. Makoto twisted the faucet and allowed the cold water to run over his hands while the other boy scrubbed the dried flakes of blood off his cheek.

He wanted so badly to start screaming about how he'd been right all along. He had told people so many times that the government was something to be wary of, but no one had listened seriously. He couldn't even mention it to his parents anymore, because they would scold him about telling fantastic tales for attention. They told him to have more faith in people, but he could never have faith in a government that didn't trust the majority of its citizens either. It was like that day, the total surprise in the middle of a peaceful neighborhood.

"It's not so bad. It won't last forever," Kawasaki told him, this time in a more sedate tone, like a parent promising a child something that may or may not be possible to fulfill.

* * *

- This story is for the manga _Aphorism._ It isn't well know, but it's pretty creative and has a lot of interesting characters. The premise for this story is a lot like the beginning of the manga, but it's only the beginning and not many people know of it anyways.

- By "characters" they mean _kanji_, borrowed Chinese characters in the Japanese language. Just about all of these characters have multiple meanings. When the protagonist is drawing his character, he is thinking about the components to the word. This is his character: 関 .

- The title, Spirits of Language, is the Japanese word _kotodama_. This word has a much deeper meaning in Japanese, but it's difficult to translate. The Japanese name of this story is _Kotodama no Monogatari_, or, the Tale of the Power of Words/Spirits of Language.

* Todai: nickname for Tokyo University, one of the most famous and prestegious universities in Japan with a well known entrance exam.

* Red torii gates: the red gates leading to Shinto shrines.


	2. Legacies

**The Spirits of Language**

_**- Kotodama no Monogatari -**_

_Aphorism_

**Chapter Two: **Legacies

His roommate was ridiculous.

After Kawasaki helped him scrub the flecks of blood from his face, they accompanied the two girls who had fought with them to dinner. It was surreal, almost as if they were no longer alive, and eating was pointless. Kawasaki, for all his cheer and endless chattering, kept his composure and quietly spoke with them over their trays of untouched food. It wasn't much by way of conversation - just simple small talk and introductions. They pointedly ignored the other students in the middle of their midlife crises.

Although, it had been hard not to jump when someone threw a chair at the wall, shattering the wood into splinters. Makoto could respect that, he supposed. If he didn't already know that something like this would happen one day, courtesy of the government, he might have reacted the same way. Really, all he could do now was scold himself for falling into such a blatant trap. He had _tried_ to warn his parents that a free tuition was too good to be true.

"What's the purpose of this...experiment anyways?" Makoto grumbled aloud, fingering the brand - _tattoo_, as Kawasaki called it. There was no doubt in his mind that it was some government experiment, but he had no idea what they might intend to test by forcing those monsters on them. He wondered what poor creature they had to genetically alter to create those grotesque things. There was also the question of how they appeared and disappeared so easily, melting into the ground within seconds.

"Experiment…?" Kawasaki muttered. He shook his head. "I don't know, either. The teacher just said that those monsters were a test of sorts. All we have to do is defeat each enemy that comes until we graduate. We don't even have to pass all of our classes to graduate."

"Will they really let us graduate at this point?" Makoto asked no one in particular, for no one had an answer.

Honda Ayako who was in their homeroom left to the class two dormitories with the boys. She had been the one to wield those swords and hack into the monster just barely stalled by Makoto's barrier. A tall, fierce girl, she had originally intimidated him with her stony face, but Honda was actually rather friendly.

Although, Makoto was in the process of redefining the word "friendly" according to his experiences. To Kawasaki, the word meant that they could skip past the stage of acquaintance and become instant allies, and to Honda, it meant that she could play the act of a mother to her wayward children. The auburn haired boy didn't seem to mind her insistent nature, reminding them both to take care of their health between classes and the Blights. She fixed a few stray hairs for them, asked if they brought enough clothes and toiletries, not that she could _really_ do anything about that.

Makoto didn't think his own mother harped after him so much, even after she found out that he would be away for an entire year without any method of communication with the outside world. It was a strange way of worrying about your friends, but he supposed it could be worse. He could be rooming with that girl (if he was a girl, that is), and then he would never hear the end of it. He could even be rooming with Kawasaki, who would never allow him a minute of sleep and silence.

Kawasaki parted ways with him, off to terrorize his new roommate across the hall, his usual expression plastered on his face again. At least, Makoto could only assume that the amiable, smiling persona was his true self. It suited the boy, in both his mannerisms and hairstyle and choice of clothing. It wasn't hard to guess that he followed pop culture enough to know the fashion styles.

He turned to the door to his dorm room, peering at the name tag posted out front. He wondered whether or not the room arrangements had been decided before or after the Blight, and shivered at the morbidity of the situation. Half expecting a cold, bare cell as a room, Makoto slid the key that came in the mail with his ID card into the door. Pushing it in, he was met with total darkness, shimmering around the center slightly from the single window with its pale curtains hanging limply in front.

It would have been nice if he didn't get a roommate, but he winced as soon as the thought entered his head. He couldn't guess how many students were left, only that there were approximately two hundred to start. There must have been plenty of rooms with only one occupant, but he didn't know whether or not the school administration shuffled the numbers around until everyone had a roommate. He didn't know why or how this place ran anything.

"Hello…I'm Nozawa. Is there anyone in there?" he enunciated into the darkness, straining his eyes to search the inky shadows for any movement. After a moment, he shuffled inside and groped along the wall for the light switch as the heavy door closed.

A few cardboard boxes and suitcases with personal belongings littered the floor and stacked on the desk. Seeing that no one was around, Makoto moved inside and flipped the luggage tag over on one of the suitcases. It read, _Nozawa Makoto, Setagaya, Setagaya Ward, Tokyo._ The longer he stared at the slightly worn cardboard, the more he remembered packing them with whatever his mother told him to bring along. Truthfully, he probably wouldn't use half of these things.

"Is...there no one here?" he called out hesitantly, a little louder than before. He hadn't wanted to seem weird in the doorway before, in case his roommate really _was_ dead and someone else was aware of that fact. What did they do with the belongings, then, he wondered? All those cases of luggage might draw suspicion when the collectors came to gather the trash. For that matter, how could garbage collectors and other staff come and go without slipping information to the outside world?

One door led to the closet, the other to an adjoining room. Makoto rested his hand on the door knob, pressing on after a moment. It could't hurt to investigate. His roommate might still have been at dinner, so he would be satisfied with a small peek before he left. It seemed that this school had more room than he first anticipated, but then again, only one year attended the school at a time. Instead of the relatively small class size of two hundred odd students, there were even less after the first day.

"W-who's there?" a small, high voice erupted from inside. Makoto jumped backwards at the sudden noise. He had been in the process of slowly convincing himself that he didn't have anyone to stay with after all, and he still could't quite locate the boy. If he didn't know beforehand that boys and girls were separated, he might have confused the voice for a girl.

Then again, he could forgive the guy for being scared out of his mind. Not everyone had anticipated something horrendous like this happening for years already. That was probably the only thing keeping him from throwing chairs and utensils at the walls.

"I'm your roommate, Nozawa. Nozawa Makoto," he added as an afterthought as he absently peered around, resigned to not knowing where the boy was in the room. He figured that he would reveal himself after a while, if he wanted to emerge at all. His name was on the plate next to the door, so their names weren't a secret or anything. "You're Takamura Haruo, right? Is that how you pronounce it?"

"Y-yeah...hey, there..there aren't anymore monsters around, right?" said the timid voice. Makoto was more easily able to distinguish it as belonging to a boy. He responded in the negative, commenting that the last of them had disappeared hours ago. It was hard to believe that so much time had elapsed, actually. He spent most of it in a haze, shifting along with the movement around him, never quite making a pressing decision for himself.

"So, you...you didn't know about this either, did you?" the boy asked. He heard the shuffle of sheets, so perhaps he was hidden behind the curtains on the bed. It was difficult to discern where the sounds came from. Makoto shuffled his feet together, scraping one against his opposite leg to readjust his sock. There was a neat little entryway for their shoes. It had confused him to see the area empty, so he hadn't expected to find anyone here.

"Well...uh, kinda, I kinda did," Makoto mumbled, apparently loud enough for the boy to hear if his startled, scandalized shout was anything to go by.

"You _knew_ and you still came to this place? It's hell! _Why_ would you want to come here?" His voice tapered off to a low whisper, forcing Makoto further into the room to catch his words as he simultaneously shook his head. He wanted to know the answer to that question, too.

"It's not like that. I didn't want to come here; my parents forced me. I mean, I didn't really know what the school would make us do, but I never really thought it was normal, you know? I just...I had a feeling, that's all. Do you understand that, or is it too confusing?" Makoto's eyes flickered around the room. He supposed he could turn the lights on, but it would be somewhat disrespectful. "I don't know why anyone would want to come here, either, even if we do get government jobs."

He was starting to doubt that, but it would be best if he didn't tell his roommate about all his misgivings concerning the government. His mother had often scolded him for corrupting his friends and classmates with such blatantly traitorous words. Even though he knew he was not wrong, he had stopped voicing his opinions to random strangers after he got into trouble a few times in his last years of elementary school.

"Well...well, you can turn on the lights if you want," his roommate mumbled, still sounding uncertain as to whether or not Makoto was some insane teenager seeking a thrill through fighting monsters. Now that his brain had time to process all the sensory information that had flooded the grounds earlier, he distinctly recalled a few stony faced students who knew exactly how to move. There really were real participants here, ones who had probably chosen better characters than "gateway".

Makoto flipped the light switch on and waited as the lights flickered and stilled. His eyes swept across the room, from the desk to the bed to the closet, finally finding his roommate huddled in the corner hidden between the desk and the bed. The blankets were thrown over his form and his shiny new school shoes peeked out from underneath the mass of cream sheets. A pair of wide eyes more skittish than Makoto's stared at him, examining him from head to toe for any signs of monster-like qualities.

He shuffled uncomfortably, unused to being stared at with such intensity, treated as if he were a tiger with sharp, blood tinted fangs. He usually tried to avoid drawing attention to himself. Any lingering stares meant that someone was suspicious of him, and he had to strive to fit in with society. He couldn't let them know that he was different from everyone else. Even though his roommate seemed relatively harmless, as harmless as a cornered rabbit anyways, he couldn't allow his old habits to slip.

"So, Takamura...I guess you're staying in this room?" he asked to break the awkward staring. All he could see were those big brown eyes emerging from the blankets, along with a pale nose and his cheekbones. The other boy nodded. Maybe he was being polite and not mentioning why (if anything comes in, you're the first thing it sees). Makoto nodded back to him slowly. "Are you...going to take your shoes off?"

"I will," he answered, though he made no move to take them off. Makoto raised his eyebrows and began a steady retreat from the room. Turning the lights on had made the situation worse, apparently.

"Alright...it's pretty late, so I'm just going to go to bed...um, don't stay up too late, yeah? It was nice meeting you." Makoto bowed on his way out, closing the door and hastily returning to his luggage to rummage through his belongings. He was_ not_ about to borrow any from Honda Ayako, no matter how desperate he was. Besides, his mother had made sure he packed every necessity. It was just a matter of finding everything.

For at least a little bit, he thought that this might have been what normal students did at a boarding school.

Class the next day resumed as any normal school year might. The occupants of their homeroom had drastically decreased, and they found out that about a hundred and ten of them had survived the first day. His class two probably had about thirty students, more or less. No one in this school seemed overly concerned about the number of students present. The teacher didn't even bother to take a roll call.

Kawasaki had evidently recovered from the adrenaline and shock of yesterday's activities. He had returned to his bright, amiable self, speaking animatedly with anyone who would listen. During their lunch break, he dragged Makoto - who was still debating whether or not they were friends - and Honda Ayako away to a far corner of the classroom to eat. Makoto introduced his roommate to them, but Kawasaki apparently didn't think to include his. He wasn't sure who the guy stayed with, because he had never mentioned it.

"This is Takamura Haruo. Takamura-san, this is Kawasaki-san and Honda-san," was how those introductions went. It was rather bland, a normal introduction between classmates, unlike their completely abnormal circumstances.

Apparently the teachers had taken some precautions this year.

At least, that was what he assumed from the chatter of the students who had known about this strange school. He learnt a lot from them, actually, but he could barely hear over Kawasaki's obnoxious rants. The other students chuckled at the few "amateurs" who clutched their manifested weapons like a lifeline, but his new acquaintances were hardly bothered. And although Makoto wasn't quite put at peace, his body more jumpy than a normal day, he mimicked their relaxed poses to the best of his ability.

He glanced at the chalkboard, upon which was written, "_Anyone who attempts suicide will be punished harshly,_" which didn't quite make sense to him. How would they punish someone who wanted to die? He winced at the thought of his fifteen year old peers considering suicide. This place might have been horrible, but he apparently valued life too much to even think about putting a blade to his wrist or throat or something like that.

It was harsh, but they had a chance to live, didn't they?

Then again, knowing the government, perhaps they didn't intend to keep them after all. Maybe they would all end up dying by the end of the year anyways, and those attempting suicide were just the smart ones. He shivered and clutched at his sides at the thought of the students becoming the government's mere guinea pigs, worthless lab rats that were of value only when they were dead. The brand on his neck burned with a different sort of pain than yesterday.

"Hey, why're you so quiet all of a sudden?" Kawasaki said as he intruded upon Makoto's personal space, nearly nose-to-nose with the other boy. He glared at the guy with his fluffy, auburn dyed hair. He hadn't spoken the entire time, besides murmuring yes and no a few times. At least he knew that Kawasaki wasn't completely inept at reading people. "Come on, talk to me! Where do you come from? What was your hometown like?"

Makoto backed away as far as possible in his chair, leaning away from the boy with a skeptic raise of his eyebrows. "I'm from Setagaya, Tokyo. It's not in the city. I live in the residential area. It's like anywhere else in Japan."

"...That's all you have to say?" Kawasaki frowned, as if he expected some grand tale of city gangs or the idyllic reminiscing of nature from the countryside. Makoto shrugged and leaned back against his chair. "Well, you're no fun. Honda-san here is from Niigata, a rural place with lots of farms. And what about Takamura-san?"

Takamura, looking as skittish as the students clutching their weapons to their chests, glanced at Kawasaki briefly before turning to his constant survey of the room. "I'm from Kyoto, outside the city."

"Wait, you don't have an accent…" Kawasaki exclaimed, as if he had just discovered some wonderful, impressive object like a rock or something. Takamura, surprisingly given his flighty personality, glared at Kawasaki and exhaled a sound akin to a huff.

"We came from Tokyo originally. Not everyone in Kyoto has such a heavy accent. I don't even live _in_ Kyoto the city. It's just in the same region, but I doubt you'd know the name of the town."

"Well, excuse me." Kawasaki frowned and turned away from the boy he had apparently deemed unpleasant. Honda had been glancing between the two since their little argument began, a disapproving frown on her lips. It was the sort of chilling disapproval a mother might give you when you had done something terribly wrong. Her arms were crossed and a string of words seemed ready to erupt from her mouth.

To Makoto's surprise, she only said evenly, "Stop being children. You two are big boys now, aren't you? Please act your age."

"Do you have any siblings? I have none," Makoto told the group, just to dispel the tension, or at least to stimulate a conversation that would. It was the first thing that came to mind - and a dangerous question, once they had started talking.

Before anyone had a chance to speak, Kawasaki lurched to the side, almost on the verge of falling off his seat. He waved excitedly towards the door, motioning someone in from the outside, inevitably from another class. Perhaps their teachers had decided to release them or just didn't care one way or another anymore. A girl walked in, the same one from the first day. She hadn't had a weapon, but stayed with Kawasaki and Honda, seeming like she knew what she was doing.

"Hey guys, this is Morioka Mikie from class three. I met her waiting for the train to arrive in Naraka City. You remember her from the first day, right?" he grinned, motioning her over to an empty chair. There were plenty of those in supply. "So, we were just talking about families, yeah? Makoto's an only child. As for me, I have one big brother and a very little sister. My elder brother went to school here and graduated three years ago, right before the chain of bad luck began."

Makoto wanted to ask what that was - the chain of bad luck - and how Kawasaki knew about such topics, but Takamura interrupted him with an indignant shout.

"Your _brother_ went here and managed to graduate? Then why in the world did you come, too?" He seemed wildly perplexed, and rightfully so. Makoto wanted those answers, too. He attributed it to his aversion of the government, he didn't think the bright future was worth it, whether or not they had to risk their lives.

"Some students are legacies," Morioka intervened evenly. She had that type of voice, a rational one, and almost monotone like their teacher's. "There's a lot of us who knew about the school coming in, and came specifically because of that. My older sister and her twin brother went to this school. Both of them work for homeland security in the Self-Defense Forces*. It's worth it, if you can survive. It's just our unfortunate luck that the school's been having a few bad years when we're entering our first year of high school."

"Exactly what she said," Kawasaki beamed, oblivious to Takamura's dismay and completely devastated face. It was an odd parody of...something, Makoto decided. "My brother works for foreign affairs. Of course, he did go to college after graduating, but coming here pretty much guarantees the job you want later on. So I guess you can call us 'legacy' students, but our relation doesn't help much besides knowing ahead of time what to expect, if that comforts you."

Makoto had a feeling it did nothing to help, but he nodded. It was a good deal of nice information to know, at any rate. It seemed that Takamura thought much less of their calm lesson of the student population, because Makoto thought he saw a panicked expression on his face before he jumped up and fled. His chair rocked precariously and tumbled to the ground as he ran from the room. Their homeroom teacher evidently no longer cared.

"You'd better not think of killing yourself, boy!" was all he had to say before returning to a thin paperback in his hands. Makoto flinched; that was pretty harsh.

"How many students are 'legacy' students?" Honda asked, curious and curiously, quite interested in the subject. "I never heard anything about it, but I thought maybe that was only because I'm from the countryside. I'm lucky I even heard about the school to begin with. But I knew I had to go, because otherwise I'd go to some no-name school in the countryside and hope to get into a decent university."

"Well, given the number of people who actually survived the first day…" Kawasaki said. "About half of the students on the first day know what the school's about. I'd guess that about a quarter of all the students are legacies. There are those of us, of course, who lost relatives here. Some of those don't come back, I would imagine, but there are some who attend anyways."

"Would you send your kids here?" Makoto asked suddenly. The question had simply occurred to him, no complex thoughts required. Kawasaki gave him a curious stare.

"If they wanted to, yeah, _if_ I ever have kids. It's a good school if there's no hope of you ever getting into a real private high school and a top university, especially if you don't have money and can't get a scholarship. It's dangerous, but...just think of it like a metaphor for life?" Kawasaki ended lamely, exhaling an uncertain chuckle.

"I don't think I would," Honda replied quickly, a strong conviction to her tone. "I definitely wouldn't. For me, sure, it's worth it now that I'm stuck here. But I wouldn't let any of my kids come. I just couldn't do that. I have a lot of siblings at home. Just thinking of them attending here is…"

"It's not for everyone, I guess," Kawasaki shrugged. He probably had no problem, and Morioka had been quite this entire time. Both of them had not suffered any major losses due to this school, at least that they would speak of, so it was natural that they not quite understand Honda. Even Makoto could not understand her reasoning fully. To him, it was just wrong to play into the government's hand in the first place.

"Then...what's the story with the characters?" Honda brought up. She pointed to her upper left arm, presumably where her brand was located under her uniform. It had something to do with a "sword" or at least, that was what Makoto guessed. He still hadn't gotten a chance to investigate his own. It didn't hurt anymore, but that probably disturbed him more. Now that he was conscious of it, his hand went up to finger the spot. He didn't know what it might look like.

"Oh, that...that is...a really complex story," Kawasaki chuckled, almost nervously, as if he didn't quite want to answer anymore.

* * *

- Oh yeah, I'm kind of seriously writing this story for NaNoWriMo. But I probably won't get 50,000 words. Ah well.

* Self-Defense Forces are Japan's equivalent to an army, since they are no longer allowed to have one as of WWII.


	3. The Gateway to Imagination

**The Spirits of Language**

_**- Kotodama no Monogatari -**_

_Aphorism_

**Chapter Three:** The Gateway to Imagination

Takamura and Makoto had time to bond in the next few days, mostly because Honda preferred a group of girls she had met and Morioka was isolated with her class, for reasons unknown. Kawasaki, for good or for bad, had decided to spend quality time with _his_ roommate. Makoto would randomly see him in the hallway chatting with a stranger or dragging a smaller, quiet looking boy with a disheveled appearance around. Although he didn't understand it, Kawasaki had somehow failed to introduce any of his new acquaintances to his roommate.

Makoto had thought that the annoyingly jubilant boy would be overjoyed to initiate another group discussion, but he had actually seen very little of him in the past three days. It was a nice reprieve, he supposed, except for the fact that he was now stuck with Takamura and his neurotic behavior that was sure to give him a heart attack before the monsters even had a chance to get their jaws near him.

There were numerous instances just while they were in their dorm room, but the worst was probably Takamura's uncanny ability to become upset and anxious about every sound and every shadow twitching on the ground. He was quick to break into tears about how the monsters would emerge from the walls again, and had even deeper suspicions about the other students, the ones who wished to wager their lives for a _job_.

Makoto might have agreed, but that didn't mean he broke down every second of his life. He had learnt self-control long ago, after he had been punished one too many times and had been forced to clean the entire classroom for three weeks in a row. Complaining and becoming anxious over such matters wouldn't change a thing. It only ostracized a person more and more, until no one could trust you. He tried to calm Takamura down, tried to convince him that it was no use crying.

As he should have expected, it didn't work at all. His roommate just launched into a deeper depression, too afraid to commit suicide, but too cowardly to stop crying every time they heard any series of thumps at night. He still hadn't figured out where those came from, only that it didn't seem to harm him. That was enough for Makoto. He had other things to worry about.

"Gateway" was still the source of a majority of his problems. Takamura had not been of any help. It was difficult to gain his attention at night once the raucous noises started, and they had classes during the day. It took him an hour to figure out that Takamura's character was the one used in the word for school, "learning". And he had no idea how to imagine that, either, besides a school textbook that would be utterly useless during a fight.

That was how Makoto ended up dragging Takamura to a different part of the campus, one they hadn't been able to visit since the first day for any variety of reasons. The library was across the school, down various hallways that twisted and shone with bright florescent lighting. It was a simple walk across the field outside, so despite his roommate's misgivings concerning new territory, Makoto managed to get them both inside the double wooden doors without losing a limb.

"We should probably figure out how to use these things. If it's all they're going to give us to fight with, we should at least find out how to do that. Honda-san told me a lot of people were coming here to research it. It doesn't seem to matter what type of context your character is used in, only that it makes up other words," Makoto explained. None of the information was something he had known beforehand. He had been lucky to catch Honda during lunch yesterday and that they talked about it.

"How am I supposed to use _knowledge,_ huh? I already know what words it's used in, and none of it helps!" Takamura argued. He was surprisingly (or unsurprisingly, depending on perspective) good at slipping away and running off. For the moment, Makoto had a firm grip on his forearm, but he didn't doubt his roommate's ability to slink away if he let go.

"Well, you can either try and think of a way to use it, or return to our room alone. I don't think there's anyone around right now," Makoto said offhandedly. At this point he didn't feel guilty for scaring the boy, who was easily defeated by the comment and prospective of another Blight disturbing their day. It hadn't happened since the first one, but according to the other students it could appear on any pleasant day.

That was enough to convince Takamura that searching for dictionaries might be a good idea, even if the character used to write "school" really had no alternative meanings. Makoto didn't understand how he might visualize knowledge, since Morioka had explained the specifics of fighting with characters. His problem was that "gateway" seemed to have no offensive properties. Was he supposed to draw doors out of thin air?

If so, he would need to visualize a place for that door to lead to...it was a huge headache. Simply being able to create a shield out of thin air wasn't enough for him, although it sounded strange. There were certainly creatures that could shatter the barrier, as that bone white monster had been able to with a few head-on charges.

The library was empty, except for the occasional employee sorting out book catalogues. The students had obviously found more pressing matters to worry about than their studies. The high shelf where the index said the dictionaries were was a little sparse, but Makoto managed to salvage two decent volumes that weren't too out of date. People certainly weren't caught up on their studies of kanji, but it was a hard subject for fifteen year olds to even possess much knowledge about in the first place.

"What's it like where you live?" Takamura asked as he lazily flipped through the dictionary. It seemed to be one of his random moments of sanity that made Makoto raise an eyebrow at him.

"Tokyo is just like any city, I suppose. Nothing really weird happens," he shrugged, trailing a finger down the columns. He was probably an abnormally dull person, but he had never found his birthplace extravagant. "It's not like TV shows. We don't really hang out in places like Shinjuku often. Because we were only junior high school students at the time, my parents never allowed me to go there anyways, and we didn't live in the city itself. You can get bored anywhere in the world."

"Oh...were you always bored?"

"Not necessarily, but I guess you could say that," Makoto said. "Before this, I imagine most of us were just normal kids. When you ask me to think back on it, I can't really remember what it is I did."

"I guess it's the same for me…I only came here because I know I can't get into a university on a scholarship. And I've always been to scared to try sports, seeing that players get hurt so often. Even my younger sister's more outgoing than I am…" Takamura sighed and placed his head on the opened dictionary, blowing a puff of breath into the air. "It'd be nice to call them."

"We aren't allowed cellphones here, right? They don't even have computers," Makoto mused. He had thought it strange from the start, of course, another suspicious detail he had tried to get his parents to notice. It had been a blaring signal that the place could not be trusted. "I guess it'd be pretty bad if we started blabbering about how this place is a slaughterhouse."

Shortly after, some people from class one requested that the student body assemble in the cafeteria for a meeting. Makoto and Takamura attended only because they had begun to grow cross-eyed from perusing those dictionaries. Along the way they heard various complaints, murmuring that it was just a bunch of foolish students who thought they could try and break out of the place. They laughed it off and continued on.

The meeting, as it turned out, was not intended to raise a student rebellion, but to raise a festival from the ground up. It confused Makoto for a while as the representatives spoke while standing on the lunch tables. The primary schools, junior high schools, and high schools normally hosted festivals for the community to attend and enjoy in the fall. Naraka High School had no such tradition, now for obvious reasons.

They proposed an impromptu festival, just to raise the students' spirits, nothing elaborate. It probably wouldn't take anymore room than the size of the cafeteria. They decided to do it quickly, just in case the next Blight decided to occur, and each class that wished to participate would set up a stand. Although it went unmentioned, Honda informed him under her breath that two students had committed suicide, and another had attempted it. The girl was now detained in the infirmary until the nurse decided she wouldn't try to kill herself again.

He had forgotten about Kawasaki until the boy came running up to them, a wide grin on his face and a dark gleam in his eyes that Makoto was not quite comfortable with. The quiet boy he had been dragging along with him was nowhere to be found, but he offered no explanation and motioned to a group of their classmates from homeroom.

"Don't you like festivals? They have a lot over in Kyoto, don't they?" Kawasaki said excitedly. It was a surprise that he wasn't jumping around to expend the extra energy.

"Hey, didn't I tell you-"

"So I got these guys together and they said they'd help with the stand. Everyone's participated in your school festivals before, right?" He didn't need an answer; all schools throughout Japan had festivals once a year. "What do you guys want to do? It can't be anything big, since it's going to happen tomorrow or the day after, but I'm sure we can put something together. The nurse said she'd talk to the staff and help us get whatever we need from outside."

"You're thinking about a festival _now?_"

"We won't have enough people to hold one in fall," Kawasaki said flippantly. Makoto's eyes flickered over to the boy, but his composure hardly changed between the offhand comment and his next rant. He supposed it made sense now that he knew Kawasaki had a sibling who had attended, but it was still a little blunt. "So, what should we do? One stand's probably going to have the food, and the rest festival games. What did everyone like as a kid?"

Makoto shrugged. He had always been dragged along as a kid by his friends, and it was only exciting because of them. His junior high school's festivals had been normal ones, bustling and hard to navigate without losing a shoe.

"Hey, hey, what about the goldfish scooping game? Someone over there shouted it out," Kawasaki said, pointing beyond the crowd. Their classmates, whoever decided to participate, reached a quick consensus brought on by the lack of time in their decision-making. This was probably the quickest, most unplanned festival anyone had ever attended, but apparently some people were intent on making it fun.

The next day's festival wasn't colorful and crowded, the air filled with a medley of aromas from cooking food, as a normal festival might have been. They set up four white tents (as the fifth class had not attended the meeting) and dragged desks and chairs outside from their classrooms to use as tables. The first class had the least amount of supplies, much to their confusion, and everyone seemed extremely unorganized.

Makoto dodged random students as he waded through the crowd centered in the middle of a courtyard, a large plastic container he could barely see over balanced in his arms. Despite the impromptu nature of the event, and much to his confusion, everyone attending seemed to be smiling and laughing. They acted as if they were in a normal high school, as if they might not die tomorrow, as if the government had not branded them as unfortunate guinea pigs. He wished he could reach the brand on his neck. Thinking about it made it itch.

He hadn't had a chance to see the complete character in the mirror yet. Takamura had explained to him what it looked like, comparing it to the one on his ankle. His description was lacking, though, and Makoto kept on forgetting to look at it.

He settled the container on a ready chair, prying the cover open to find all the necessary equipment wrapped in neat bags. The plastic nets, the bowls, and the random prizes were inside. There wasn't much to the goldfish scooping game, and the little fish would arrive separately. A large basin had been dragged out of a storage closet from somewhere in the school and Honda was busy filling it with water from the sinks outside with her new acquaintances.

Makoto tore open the plastic bags containing the nets and stacked them on a desk. The other classes each had a different game. Class one had the empty tent with rows of chairs set up in front of it. Class three had the game involving chopsticks and a tiny object that had to be transferred from one person to the next without dropping it. Class four was in charge of the food stands, since it had the most students willing to participate. They had managed to receive fish cakes, shaved ice, yakitori, and takoyaki* from the staff that usually bought the food served in the cafeteria.

"There's no charge, so just give a net to whoever wants to try," Kawasaki had told him. Takamura and Makoto were arranged to switch places after half an hour, and he could see his roommate wandering around and investigating the open tent, surprisingly into the festivities now that someone had dragged out a radio to play some music. Evidently he had met a classmate to talk to while they had been planning the event yesterday.

Kawasaki was a different story. He slid into the desk chair next to Makoto and proceeded to jabber an endless amount of tales to him while they handed the colorful little nets to students who wanted to try.

Makoto watched the red goldfish quiver and dart about the plastic tub, scurrying away from the nets as fast as they could. A hand would delve below the water, carrying a helpless, squirming body on the thin plastic film to deposit in the bowls floating on the surface. They had set up two stations of this game, and most people gave it a try for fun.

He wondered if the teachers - and subsequently, the government - observed them scurrying about battlefield like this. Maybe some were quiet observers like him, contemplative, and maybe some laughed at their meager attempts to survive and wield their characters efficiently. It wouldn't surprise him if the cameras around the school did just that. What did they think of this spectacle?

"I miss this kind of thing!" one boy exclaimed. Makoto still didn't know who came from which class, but he thought he had seen the boy by class three's tent. Normally Makoto wouldn't take notice of people that weren't suspicious, but he'd seen this guy around the school often. Wherever he went, he made some commotion that caused the other students to cast disapproving glances at him. Like Kawasaki, he seemed to have not noticed the irritation on everyone else's faces. He was another blissfully ignorant person.

"I know, right? It reminds you of the festivals back home!" Kawasaki leaned over the tub and grinned in the boy's face. It might have unnerved any other person, but the guy simply smiled back and flicked the net against the water. He slid the plastic underneath a frantically swimming fish and scooped it up, depositing it in the red bowl floating next to it.

Makoto held a net out to a girl who wanted to try, someone who had come over from class one's tent. She had a strange, wide-brimmed heavily decorated with colorful sequins in one hand. It made him wonder what they were doing, but the crowd covered up the distance in between.

"Hey, Nozawa, this is Kasuga Minato from class three! Kasuga, this is Nozawa Makoto-kun from my class," Kawasaki beamed. Makoto raised an eyebrow at him. Since when had they become so friendly that he was allowed to drop the suffix on his name? He guessed that he should be prepared to hear Kawasaki call him by his first name soon.

Makoto bowed his head as the standoffish boy did the same. He had heard him bragging over pointless things he supposedly did in junior high school in the cafeteria yesterday around lunchtime. Like Kawasaki, his antics were relatively harmless, but extremely annoying after a while. "I met him after classes yesterday. He already got detention from his homeroom teacher! He had to clean the entire classroom by himself."

Maybe Kasuga was more annoying than normal people. The boy showed them a chuckle intended to sound embarrassed, but he seemed rather proud of his accomplishment instead. Makoto could see it in his eyes and wide smile. He wasn't much like Kawasaki after all. This one was a troublemaker, the type that instantly set Makoto on edge. He could never tell whether or not they were pretending, and their carefree attitude might have hidden any number of true intentions.

"Well, my classmates are happy for that," he laughed. "I didn't even do much. I just drew some fun pictures on the board. I was going to erase them."

"Hey, what's class one doing over there? Can you see them?" Kawasaki asked, pointing to the peak of the tent across the grounds. Instead of handing out the nets as he was supposed to, he had abandoned his pile and was playing the game himself. Makoto scowled at him, but he didn't notice in the slightest as he chatted with Kasuga.

"They're doing a play. I have no idea what it's about."

_ The ignorant will always be ignorant,_ he thought as Kawasaki accidentally poked and prodded the goldfish with the dangling net, the plastic film tearing in the water as the fish swam into it. He wondered what the staff would do with the fish when they were done today. Would they sell them at a real festival or to a shop? Would they just dispose of them regardless of the loss of money? It must have been a pitiful life for those fish, for all the joy and beauty they brought human beings.

Kawasaki dropped his net in the tub and it floated down to the bottom. Sighing, Makoto reached in to retrieve it, the goldfish brushing past his arm as they swarmed around him, little ghosts dancing across his skin with their scales giving off small glints in the sunlight. Kasuga tossed his net in the trashcan next to the tub and leaned his elbows precariously on the edge. Makoto scowled again and grabbed the red plastic bowl, gently depositing the fish back into the water.

He remembered the empty threats everyone uttered at home, wishes that certain people would stop coming to school, for others to just go and die. Sometimes people wished that they would die, instead of dealing with life's numerous, painful troubles. They were always empty threats. Even when someone was angry, no one truly wished death upon another if they were normal.

Now, though, in this school...that simple wasn't possible. Makoto gazed at the two boys, Kawasaki with his fluffed, auburn hair, Kasuga with his gelled and spiked dark hair. They were laughing hysterically about something trivial. Guilt was not the only emotion he would feel if he wished death upon either of the two. Something far deeper was at work. Any of them might die tomorrow when the Blight came, if it came at all. Someone, no matter how much they smiled, might decide to commit suicide tonight.

Makoto humored them, because it was the only human thing to do at the time. He handed the nets to Honda, who had been in charge of the other tub, and pulled Kawasaki up by his sleeve. Most of the students had shed their blazers and ties, now only in their dress shirts. The other boy gave him a quizzical look.

"Do you like shaved ice? I haven't had any since I was little," Makoto muttered, refusing to look away in embarrassment. Kawasaki still seemed confused for a moment, but he quickly recovered and leapt from his seat with a pleased smile on his face.

"And here I thought you were never going to relax! Of course I like shaved ice! Let's go; you too, Kasuga." Kawasaki took charge again, and Makoto's moment of initiative ended. He was glad to melt back into the role of the follower, the limp plush doll that Kawasaki dragged around at a whim. This time, a small smile was on his face, and he didn't allow himself to be dragged.

Takamura would probably be cursing his name later when someone went to find him to take over the game, but it thought it was worth it. Besides, Makoto was sure that he could win over Takamura any day, the boy was so easy to scare. By this point, he wouldn't even feel guilty about it. Maybe he should tell him ghost stories tonight. He knew a few creepy, bone-chilling ones from the time he and his junior high school homeroom went on a camping trip.

Kawasaki reached over the crowd, as he was a bit taller than the other two, and ordered their shaved ices. There were small tabletop grills and students in bandanas standing over them, turning over glazed takoyaki balls and sticks of yakitori. The thick smoke from the burning coals curled into the air, carrying a distinctive scent of food and fire. A girl held a cup of shaved ice and poured the red cherry flavoring on top, and then stuck a small, thin spoon in the side before handing it to Kawasaki.

When they walked away, nibbling on the cold desert, they passed class three's game and the tubs full of shimmering red fish. Class one's play, as Kasuga had told them, seemed pointless, but funny. He saw the girl with the strangely pattered hat again, and no one from that class had their uniform on.

That's what this day was about - pointless fun. It wasn't necessarily a way to get to know each other, because no one wanted to think about who might be graduating with them at the end of the year. Even Takamura, for all his neurotic, mistrusting behavior, and Makoto's usually blank expressions and suspicions, had some degree of fun. They could afford to be pretty little fish today, clustered in a pool without a care in the world. If someone picked them up, that was fine. If they swam in circles and avoided capture, then that was fine, too. Because they were fish, they couldn't care for one way or the other, nor did they have a choice in the matter.

That night, Makoto dug through his memories of the class trip he had attended two years ago and forced Takamura to keep the lights turned off and the curtains drawn. He told him scary stories about eerie faces and gleaming eyes in mirrors, of the strange sounds a forest emitted at night and the lost souls that wandered them. After Takamura was done hiding under the covers and throwing pillows at him to shut him up, he told stories of demons and spirits, of the shrines that littered Kyoto and of the tales of old that had died in Makoto's neighborhood outside Tokyo.

* * *

- This is just a fun chapter. I wanted to include a school festival, but it ended up being very tiny. It appears that the goldfish scooping game along with other variants (turtles, chicks, plastic balls) are popular for festivals in Japan.

* Yakitori and takoyaki: Yakitori is skewered grilled chicken and takoyaki are octopus fish balls. They are very popular festival foods. Shaved ice also seems to fall into this category, not to be mistaken with snow cones.


	4. To All Who Trespass on Sacred Land…

**The Spirits of Language**

_**- Kotodama no Monogatari -**_

_Aphorism_

**Chapter Four: **To All Who Trespass on Sacred Land…

There was no warning except for the light golden rays of sunshine that protruded from the drawn curtains. He woke to screams from down the hall, blinking his bleary eyes and squinting from the light intruding upon the room. He crawled out of bed, sluggishly climbing down from the ladder in a heap of blankets and frazzled hair, groping for his glasses to right the blurry world. The metal frames were still perched crookedly on his nose when Takamura came charging out of his room, fully dressed and in complete disarray.

"At least we don't have classes, right?" Makoto called out as he struggled to yank the blankets off his waist. He still needed to throw proper clothes on, not to mention shoes. He wouldn't fight monsters without shoes at the very least. Takamura released a guttural noise that sounded somewhere between a frustrated snarl and a beastly groan before he stomped back into his room, tears already in the corners of his eyes.

"I can't do this…" he muttered with his face between his hands. Makoto flashed him a questioning glance as he reached into his closet to grab a dress shirt and pants.

"What did you do on the first day if you can't fight?" he asked. As far as he knew, the monsters had been everywhere. He had even seen a few bodies, large and small, fall to their deaths from the rooftops. The massive creatures had invaded every square centimeter of the school. Wherever they had turned were monsters with wide, flat teeth, and gaping jaws slathered in blood.

"I ran," Takamura shuddered with a sniffle. "What else could I do? I thought we were all going to die. We're all going to die today, instead."

Makoto had yet to button his shirt as he slid into his shoes at the small entryway, unlocking the door to peek his head outside. The hallway was chaotic, half-dressed people scurrying here and there screaming about the Blight, some already clutching their weapons. His hand moved to his neck and fingered the brand. Last night he had examined the intricate, curling symbol in the mirror to find a perfect tattoo without the raised and swelled skin of a brand. Still, he could identify it as nothing other than a malicious mark.

He moved quickly down the hallway, Takamura apparently following behind him, unable to locate any of their other friends. Just as he stepped outside class two's dormitory block, the sun overwhelmed his vision and he shied away from its blinding glare. That didn't make sense, though. The island had eclipsed the sun, thus inviting the Blight, hadn't it? The thought lingered and floated around in his mind as he clenched his eyes shut and the light faded into darkness.

Makoto woke for the second time in ten minutes, but he couldn't be sure of that, either. A heavy pressure had settled in his skull, uncomfortable, but not painful. There was no way of understanding how the passage of time might have worked in this realm, even if he did have a watch. The sky above was the same light blue as anywhere else in the world, and that was a relief. Even if this place was some strange fabrication, at least it resembled reality.

He raised himself to his elbows and glanced around at the dark, leafy trees surrounding him. The air smelled of damp soil, a much deeper scent than anything he might find in a flowerpot. The forest stretched ahead of him, sloping up an incline that lead to a mountain towering above the flatland where he had been deposited. It was strange. Perhaps he had been drugged and brought here for the next Blight.

There were no others in sight, just the low murmuring of insects in the canopy, and no monsters ready to attack him. As he slowly climbed to his knees, Makoto dusted the damp earth from his clothes and stumbled to the edges of the small clearing, peering through the trees beyond. It looked awfully dark in there, with thin blinds of light sprinkling the forest floor through the gaps in the leaves as the only source of brightness.

He hesitated to call out for anyone. If he broke the silent balance of the forest, he might trigger the creatures of today's Blight to attack. Alone, he had no chance of defeating anything larger than a rabbit. His barrier could only stall for time until it shattered, and he didn't know how fast he could recover from it. But he didn't want to wander from the starting point and find himself hopelessly lost. He was never good at navigating anything that didn't have clear signposts leading the way.

Makoto waited for something to happen. He almost considered wandering directly for the slope of the mountain until he heard the foliage rustle to his right. Watching with eyes opened so wide they hurt, he only released his breath when he saw a human being with a blazer emerge from the undergrowth. He recognized that face as Kasuga's memorable grin and inwardly groaned at his back luck. The person who emerged from behind him was Honda with some sort of pointy dagger clenched in her hand.

"Hey, it's you, from the festival! Your name is...Nomura, isn't it?" Kasuga asked, sauntering over with a smile reminiscent of Kawasaki's. Makoto didn't allow himself to wonder how the boy was doing as he scowled and shook his head.

"I'm Nozawa. Nozawa Makoto," he grumbled.

"Ah, Nozawa-san, sorry about that," Kasuga chuckled in that insincere tone of his. "Do you know what's going on, Nozawa-san? I could only find Honda Ayako-san here."

He shrugged just as Honda opened her mouth to speak. "Morioka-san told me that these types of Blights only occur in teams of three. We won't be able to find any others around here. It's like...a test of teamwork or something. There's usually a creature that administers the test, so we'll find it around here somewhere. This time it's probably at the base of the mountain."

"We're already at the base of the mountain," Makoto observed, staring at the large land mass ahead of them. "If it's about teamwork...what's Kasuga-san's character, just so that we know? Mine is 'gateway', also read as 'barrier'. It can block attacks for a little while before it breaks. Honda-san's is..."

"Steel," she supplied, flicking the tip of the plain knife in her hand. "It's not limited to knives and swords, of course."

"Oh, I have the character 'to cut'!" Kasuga said happily. Makoto shot him a leveled stare, but he didn't seem to take the hint and elaborate further. For all his laughter and bright attitude, Makoto would have thought that he could at least know when to take a situation seriously like Kawasaki. The two were so similar in personality that it was eerie, but Kasuga seemed to live in a slightly different world.

"Well, we're a little unbalanced, but it's not so bad. Let's go forward, alright?" Honda said as she raised her blade into a defensive position and stalked towards the mountain looming ahead. Makoto couldn't argue and fell into step behind her, turning only to quiet Kasuga down. He didn't know how to be subtle at all. Makoto just hoped that he knew more about his character than his careless tone let on.

After wandering for a time, picking their way through the undergrowth with no clear road, the forest abruptly ended in a clean line that stretched around the mountain. The trees started again just as suddenly beyond the thin clearing, but they were more interested in the large fixture that came before the forest. Sleek red wood cut into their fields of vision amongst the earthy textures around them. A bold Shinto shrine stood directly in their path, a red torii gate looming directly above their heads as they emerged from the trees.

Little slips of folded paper hung off the shrine, strung on thin strings, fluttering in the wind. Small bells chimed in the distance. Despite the fact that all the spring cherry blossoms had shed their petals already, two willowy trees stood on either side of the shrine in full bloom. The cherries gently showered the ground with light pink flowers, a scene of complete tranquility one only found in books nowadays. They couldn't hear anything beyond the forest.

Kasuga stepped up from behind Makoto and instantly surged forward with a light laugh. The soles of his loafers made soft tapping noises against the paved path leading up to the shrine as he danced in a small circle, emitting noises of wonder. Evidently, someone had never seen an authentic Shinto shrine before. It was impressive, Makoto admitted, but he had seen plenty of them in and around Tokyo as a child on class trips, all the historical landmarks where foreigners visited and photographers lurked.

He just couldn't bring himself to relax in this one, as much as the atmosphere invited it. There were only a few things he was certain of in this situation, and that this was not their world was prominent among them. They did not belong here, and this shrine had not been made by human hands. The closer they walked to the actual building, the more he saw of its perfection, as if it had been erected yesterday and the weather had not had a chance to render it to decay.

"This place is…" Honda started in a whisper masked by Kasuga's cheerful chattering in the background. Her knuckles had turned white from her grip on the knife's metallic handle. Kasuga seemed to be talking to an invisible audience, his arms flying into grand circles as he strode over the stone ground. "Where are the monsters?"

A strong breeze swept by, whisking the petals into the air in a storm reminiscent of a movie production or the height of a cherry blossom viewing festival. Makoto raised his arm to cover his eyes from the fluttering flowers and squinted at the shrine. It had to exist there for a purpose.

"_Who treads on sacred land? Who steps foot on the earth touched by the gods? Answer, unworthy humans, whether or not you are worthy to follow in their shadows._"

The deep, breathy voice emerged in harmony with the world around them, although Makoto saw no correlation between the two. The voice was ethereal, but had none of the characteristic beauty a movie might have attempted to depict it with. There was endless wisdom behind that tone, belonging to something that would far outlive their brief human existences. Makoto couldn't even understand the ancient language at first, and he struggled to comprehend the archaic words as it spoke.

That was the sensation this world gave a person - the pointlessness of human life. It was an enlightening, depressing concept. There were a million things of vast importance, more than any one man could ever dream of reaching. There were so many things they would never know about the world. For instance, who had built that shrine over there? Perhaps those answers had disappeared with time.

When the blossoms cleared, the first thing they saw were bold, golden brown feathers attached to massive wings. The sight of a clearly humanoid body behind the graceful arcs confused the teenagers for a moment. Dressed in traditional garb the colors of the earth, the winged man also wore a sleek red mask depicting narrowed eyes and a long nose that resembled a beak. A mane of feathers dropped down its back like a headdress.

Maybe that was because it was a tengu floating before them, the size of a normal man, but enhanced by the great wings perched on his back. It looked slightly different than the ones depicted in the traditional ukiyo-e prints hanging in art museums, but that was only to be expected of anything inhabiting this world. As its sandaled feet touched the ground, the heavy beats from its wings came to a stop, and the long arcs neatly folded themselves against its back.

"_Answer me: who is it that trespasses on sacred land? Turn back now or do not return home at all._" The students exchanged glances as they began to regroup before the tengu. Due to the nature of Blights, the only way home was across this mountain. They had no way of knowing whether or not a world even existed if they traveled backwards.

"The only way we can get home is through this mountain," Honda explained carefully, her words polite and unassuming. Makoto could see streaks of sweat on her forehead and her hand trembling around the knife. He couldn't work any words from his throat, and Kasuga seemed awestruck. Makoto couldn't decide if that was a good thing. "Is there any way we can pass through? We don't intend to hurt anyone."

Makoto swallowed his thoughts just in case his mouth decided to work again. He was under the impression that the purpose of the Blights was to fight the monsters they encountered, not talk peace with them. Then again, he thought with a shiver, if there was only one creature in the vicinity, it had to be strong, akin to the boss of a video game. It was exactly like the boss level of a video game. If they struggled to kill the bone-white monsters on the first day, they would have no hope against the tengu.

He searched the creature's body, but found no trace of weapons. In place of its fingernails were talons, but they were not clenched or bared as if to attack them. The mask hid any emotions it might have expressed. Its tone remained haunting and otherworldly, and Makoto had a feeling that there were no fluctuations of its voice.

"_Only worthy humans may pass this shrine. I ask one last time: who is it that dares to trespass on sacred land?_"

"I'm Honda Ayako, from Niigata," Honda said with a deep bow at her waist, as if she was asking a huge favor of the winged man or apologizing for a grave mistake. He wondered if the creature even knew where Niigata was. This mountain couldn't exist in real life. There was no possible way for it to exist with such an immaculate shrine and no traces of humanity for kilometers around. Besides the stonework here, there were no paths in the forest through which humans would have been forced to walk if people had created the shrine.

"I'm Nozawa Makoto. I'm from Tokyo...or, uh, Edo*." He gave an awkward bow, unused to the motion. He had rarely been in situations that required such formality, so even telling the creature his name was unusual and stilted.

"I'm...Kasuga Minato," the other boy mumbled after Honda had nudged him in the side. The entire time, for some reason Makoto could not fathom, he had been staring up at the tengu in awe instead of apprehension or fear. This was a Blight. No matter how harmless the monster, Makoto was sure that even the weakest of them would have no trouble killing a human. And this one was strong. He could see it in the rippling wings and taut muscles beneath those billowy traditional clothes.

"Please, we really need to get through," Honda enunciated, lifting her head just enough to glance at its looming form. Despite the fact that it was the size of a normal human male, perhaps a little taller than the average Japanese, it was a massive character. "We won't hurt the forest."

If they could see its eyes, perhaps they might have seen it narrow them in consideration. And then those graceful, powerful wings flickered, tracing an arc as the tengu shifted position, his feet skimming the ground as if he were as light as the petals tracing little swirls on the ground. One arm fanned out in a wide motion, nonthreatening, eerie in its simplicity. Makoto flinched when he saw it move, expecting a sudden attack they would have no time to counter.

"_Very well,_" it pronounced carefully. Its lips below the edge of the bird mask moved as if to produce sound, but did not fluctuate with any traceable emotion. "_Provide an offering to the gods and your safe passage through this mountain is guaranteed. They shall bless you with fortune. Enter the forest knowing that I shall observe your progress. Should you go back on your words, you shall not leave this mountain alive._"

"Thank you very much," Honda said with another bow. Somehow, her knife had disappeared, although Makoto didn't quite know how she created one in the first place. Every time he had seen a weapon in her hands, she had already summoned it before he saw her. As for this situation...Makoto frowned. Honda either knew how to stay calm in a dire situation or had known about the tengu beforehand. Although, he supposed it wasn't that strange. She had adjusted well on the first day, despite having been just as surprised as everyone else.

The girl moved straight down the path to the red shrine, sleek in the sunlight. It was strange, he observed, how the sun's heat didn't seem to affect them despite its position high in the sky. There was a warm tingle on his skin and the cool touch of the wind, nothing more. He had thought that it would be unbearably hot after they left the cover of the forest shade, even though he was still in his dress shirt and had yet to even button it up. He half expected to return to their world soaked in blood and hadn't bothered.

Kasuga trailed after him, constantly glancing behind his back at the unmovable tengu, his feet tapping out a nervous prance on the stones. Honda stepped right up to the shrine, ducking underneath the fluttering pieces of paper. She bit her bottom lip and turned to the two befuddled boys with a helpless shrug, motioning to the empty bowl and the offering box. Like everything else, they seemed new and unused. He couldn't see the usual tick marks where the coins people threw into the offering box had worn away at the paint.

"I ran out without anything but my clothes. Do you have anything? It doesn't have to be big or expensive. A yen or two will do for each of us, if you have it," she explained. Noting Makoto's questioning, uncertain stare, she shook her head and motioned once more towards the box. "I'll tell you later. Do you have anything?"

Makoto allowed his gaze to linger for a few more seconds before his hands delved into his pockets, finding crushed gum wrappers and lint. He didn't suppose those would make a proper offering to anything except the god of trash and other useless items. Maybe one of those existed. Shinto gods were strange like that; if there was a god that cleaned the kitchen floors, why couldn't a god of trash exist*?

"I don't have anything, either…What about Nomura's glasses?" Kasuga said, his voice rising in pitch as he shoved his torso between the other two. Makoto cast him a disgruntled glare and shoved him away by the shoulder, hissing when he tried to snatch the frames off his nose. His back bumped against the side of the offering box, for which he received a warning glance from both Honda and the tengu.

He backed away and bowed his head in apology, hands folded messily in front of him, before he spat, "I need those to see, you know. And my name's Nozawa, not Nomura. Why don't we just toss it your shoes? They're nice and new and I'm sure the school will give you new ones. Or you can steal a pair from someone."

Granted, Makoto had shoes, too. But he wasn't happy with this guy's attitude. There was a certain look in his eyes that betrayed the obliviousness he tried to impress upon people. Unlike Kawasaki, Kasuga could have ulterior motives, and that meant that Makoto would never truly trust him. When he tried to protest, Makoto shot him a nasty glare and pointed at his shoes. The boy looked between his two teammates helplessly, but Honda shrugged and Makoto crossed his arms over his chest. At least Kasuga had the time to put his blazer on.

"Fine," he mumbled, yanking the shoes off and setting them down on the tray where fruits and buns were normally placed. It was a strange sight, they all had to admit. But then again, this wasn't their world, and the tengu said nothing that might suggest it was a _bad _offering. He remained passively standing in the center of the courtyard, wingtips drifting in the breeze. With one last bow, they slipped into the forest behind the shrine.

"...Now what? Was that supposed to be the challenge? How did you know about the bird-thing? How am I supposed to cross a whole mountain without my shoes?" Kasuga ranted when they stepped far enough away from the shrine, the red rooftop only a small peak in the distance, the tops of the cherry trees an indistinguishable pink mass.

"Morioka-san told me about it yesterday. She said that sometimes these types of Blights happen. Normally, when we get split into groups of three, it's testing our abilities to work as a team or our loyalty or some such thing. Sometimes we don't have to fight, and fighting will actually make it worse. So I guess these things _do_ teach us, just...not in a very safe way," Honda said as they wandered through the trees. "I don't know when this thing ends, though. Maybe when we reach the peak?"

Makoto shrugged. He supposed it wasn't too strange that people worked together in these types of situations. If they intended on surviving through the year, they had to make friends to at least pass the time with, and the survival aspect meant all the more reason to enlighten each other on this sick game the government played. Not all the students were as distant as him or as annoying as Kasuga.

The dappled patterns on their skin swayed as the wind played with the trees above them. The blocks of light quivered and blurred, gently at first, and increased in intensity as they advanced up the side of the mountain. Makoto didn't show much concern for it, since he figured that this strange breeze never evolved into huge gusts of wind strong enough to chill them. Perhaps, like the sun, it affected the world around them, but could not touch the humans that did not belong here.

The broad canopy shifted above them, eventually swaying so much that they could hear the invisible wind whistle through the branches. It was strange.

They didn't have much time to contemplate its mystic qualities before the sunlight shone past the thick layers of leaves and they were forced to cover their eyes once more.

When Igarashi Hiroko woke with her face in the dirt, she instantly groaned at her bad luck. These types of Blights, in her opinion, were the worst. There was nowhere to hide in teams of three, and most required that the teammates work together to solve the problems they would face. Without proper cooperation and a certain degree of trust, some characters* wouldn't allow the students to pass, even if the completed the task originally assigned to them. In that sense, this was still very much a school.

Even worse than the teams-of-three Blight were her teammates. Miraculously, they had already found each other by recognizing the other boy's voice and proceeding to scream insults at each other until they managed to convene at a certain spot. All Hiroko had to do was follow their obnoxious argument until she came across the two boys verbally ripping each other apart. They didn't even notice her presence until she tapped them on the shoulders and yanked at the ties around their necks with a scowl.

Usually she wasn't so straightforward, but this time she made an exception. They would have been quite pleased to have continued on all day, and she was pretty sure that these types of Blights had time limits. She wasn't about to die on the second one just because her teammates were two bickering idiots.

Fortunately for her, the boy with the auburn colored hair composed himself after another minute and crossed his arms stubbornly over his chest, effectively ending the conversation.

* * *

- Another Blight, yay! A tengu is a spirt/demon from Japanese mythology that is know to protect mountains. You had to show it politeness and humbleness in order to pass.

* Tokyo/Edo: Edo was the old name for the capital of Tokyo. Since the tengu speaks in ancient Japanese, they figured it wouldn't know about the name change.

* Characters: this is the name given to the monsters by the students in the manga, due to the character that represents them. (Beginning, water, etc.) This one was "mountain".


	5. Second Chances, Second Lives

**The Spirits of Language**

_**- Kotodama no Monogatari -**_

_Aphorism_

**Chapter Five:** Second Chances, Second Lives

"Look," the auburn haired boy said with a severe glare. "This is probably an easy Blight. All these teams of three ones test is teamwork. We don't have to love each other to pass, so let's just find the boss and get out of here. We can argue all we want once we're out. What were we even arguing about in the first place?"

The other boy backed up, silenced for a moment, before his head swung around to observe the tranquil and secluded scenery around them. Hiroko didn't know how the boy didn't notice it when they first woke up with their faces kissing the earth. His mouth was agape, moving without making any sounds as he stared up at the mountain, until he finally managed to say, "Where _are_ we?"

"I don't know. It doesn't really matter either, does it? Come on; I don't want to stay here all day," the auburn haired boy snapped. He nodded his head in Hiroko's direction and dropped his folded arms to bow. A smile twitched on the corners of his lips, betraying the lightheartedness struggling to remain beneath his anger. "I'm sure the lady over here doesn't want to stay in a forest all day, either. What's your name by the way? I'm Kawasaki Hisoka. That useless guy over there is called Takamura."

"Hey!" the other boy interjected before she could respond. She would have allowed him to speak first, but after his initial outburst he seemed reluctant to continue. The words wouldn't form on his lips, and he seemed utterly frustrated by that fact. Kawasaki Hisoka flashed him a smug smile that might have seemed innocent under any other circumstances. He inclined his head towards Hiroko again, inviting her to speak.

"Well, I'm Igarashi Hiroko. I'm in class one. I look forward to working with you," she said politely, but it was a mere formality. She doubted that she would enjoy working together with either of them and had no desire to travel with two bickering boys surrounding her. Kawasaki nodded, proclaimed that she was a _nice _person with manners, unlike certain individuals, and led them through the shaded canopy at the base of the mountain.

The other boy - Takamura - looked like he wanted to retort with a scathing comment, but the darkened forest seemed to dampen his enthusiasm. As soon as the well-lit clearing disappeared behind the trees, he instantly closed his mouth and kept far too close to Hiroko's back for comfort. He constantly collided with her, jumped at the slightest sound no one else had even heard, and even grabbed at her sleeve a few times until she swatted him away. She couldn't see his nerve-wracked form, but she had a feeling that she didn't want to see him anyways.

All she saw was Kawasaki's back and the swirling black pattern over his uniform's shoulder. His auburn hair wavered in the breeze, not stiff as she had expected that type of person's hair to be. She did suppose that might have been because no one had enough time to dress properly before the Blight started. Most students weren't morning people, although Blights had the tendency to wake anyone up in a matter of seconds.

Either that, or it sent a person right back to sleep in an equal amount of time, and no one woke up from that type of slumber.

Even so, Hiroko had to narrow her eyes at Kawasaki as he weaved between the trees. His air-headed behavior, both in school and in Blights, or what little she had seen of it, should have led her to think that he was harmless. She had thought that he was another naive fifteen year old who had believed the school's propaganda and false truths. The knowledge he managed to have about this type of Blight was a little beyond her expectations.

It probably didn't mean much since they were all stuck in the same situation. That slight advantage students who had known about the school ahead of time possessed usually became useless after surviving the first few weeks. Even knowing about the Blights wouldn't guarantee survival, either. Kawasaki could even have chosen a character related to knowledge or learning, with or without knowing about the school prior to the first day. Those types of people were only useful for support, just as Hiroko was.

Her relatives had taught her plenty about the school. Not all of her family attended Naraka, of course, since some didn't think a government job was worth their lives, and some couldn't even see the island floating in the sky. Her older sister, for instance, had just graduated from high school and entered Keio University in Tokyo on half a scholarship. Hiroko had always been told that she should follow her sister's path, as their immediate family didn't place any special consideration for those who enrolled in Naraka.

Perhaps that was exactly why she chose to be here now. Perhaps she wanted to prove that she could exceed those expectations and limits, and that despite her laid-back personality, she too could accomplish things. The fighting didn't bother her as much as it should have. If she had chosen an offensive character such as "sword" or "power", she might have had some concerns. If she had written a defensive character like "barrier", she would probably be even less cautious than she was now.

That was why she enjoyed being a support-type. She had no unnecessary factors to contend with and exercised just enough caution to hide and dodge the monsters as they came. No one pressured her for help, because she never showed her ability to others in battle. It was a subtle type of power that any number of the cowardly people who hid during the Blights might have possessed. And that was why she had always dreaded these teams-of-three tests. While some didn't require them to fight, some did require them to showcase their abilities.

The tengu that appeared in front of the shrine incensed her worries. They were creatures known in myth for their hostility towards trespassers and they guarded their mountain strongholds to the death. She lingered behind Kawasaki, the boy stepping forward unflinchingly like a fool. As he came to a stop uncomfortably close to the hovering creature, she fingered her right wrist and prepared herself to activate the character hidden by her sleeve.

"What are you _doing?_" Takamura hissed from behind her. Hiroko winced; he sounded like he was standing over her shoulder, but she was rather curious as well. Maybe he had a powerful character or maybe he was just cocky and overconfident. He seemed like that type of person.

"_Who dares trespass on sacred land? Those who are deemed unworthy shall not pass and defile the land of the gods._"

Hiroko shivered at the voice. She wasn't sure she could get all three of them out of here in time if it did decide to attack. If so, she would be able to save at least one of the boys. These decisions were always tougher once she had a name to match their faces. Unidentified strangers were easier to save and sacrifice. Even though these two were annoying, she wasn't a bad enough person to be able to arbitrarily decide who lived and died.

"Oh, do _you_ want to try, Takamura-_san_?" Kawasaki asked, completely turning around to face the other boy with something halfway between a smirk and a smile. Hiroko stiffened, eyes immediately darting to the tengu and the sharpened nails that resembled talons twitching at its side. It wasn't wise for them to turn their backs on the enemy, especially this solitary creature straight from mythology. Its wings fluttered, but she wasn't sure if that was from the wind or not.

"No, I do not want to try! Aren't you the smart one anyways? You always seem to know everything! Just solve this one yourself," Takamura said nervously, angrily. His anxiety seemed to make him angrier.

"Hey, I never claimed to know everything. Everything I told you was just basic information. Everyone should know it, even people like you. I don't have a character like 'knowledge' or something like that, so I _can't_ know everything." Kawasaki shrugged and Hiroko shrieked when she saw the tengu start to move its arm, deadly talons poised to strike the boy's head as it drew its powerful wings back. She backpedaled, colliding with Takamura, pressing her fingers painfully into her wrist.

"Get out of here, Takamura," she hissed with a nod to the forest behind them. There was no way they could make it through the mountain alive once the tengu was after them. A horrible weight shifted in her stomach. She shouldn't even try to escape. The situation was hopeless anyways. No matter how far they traveled, they would never be able to return and the time limit would end their lives, if they managed to evade the tengu.

Kawasaki swung around to face the demon, stumbling to avoid the swiping talons. He must not have had an offensive character, because he didn't activate anything as he backed away from the tengu, its wings stirring the wind and flower petals around them into a storm. If they could see its eyes, it would have been glaring.

"_You humans are insolent,_" it hissed. Its ethereal tone was no longer even and controlled, reflecting sophistication, but it had become grating and malevolent. Behind that human sounding voice was the faint screech of a bird's shrill cry. "_You cannot agree amongst yourselves, let alone hold benevolent intentions towards this mountain. You need not even be pure of heart. Let the gods curse you a thousand times over no matter where your travels lead you._"

"I apologize, guardian protector of this mountain! Please accept my apology! We-we're human, and so we fight and argue. We mean no disrespect," Kawasaki gasped with a hasty bow. He hesitated in bowing too deeply and watched the creature's every move with a critical, apprehensive eye.

Hiroko narrowed her eyes and stepped up to stand beside Kawasaki despite her quivering knees and palpitating heart. She started to kneel on the ground, pushing the palm of her hand against the boy's back so that they both ended up with their noses mere centimeters from the stone. They could see nothing but sandals and edge of the creature's robes. It was a vulnerable position, the ultimate apology. It could kill them within seconds if it so desired. Her instincts screamed for her to stand up and run. Her hand itched to activate her ability.

"We're terribly sorry. Please accept our apologies," she said clearly with her head still bowed, the edges of her straight cut hair brushing the stones. Her forehead was sticky with sweat, even though the sun was just a warm brush against her skin. The light pink petals relaxed in their dance, coming to a gentle waltz. Still, she didn't allow herself to lift her head until she heard the tengu's voice again, now calmer, but holding a certain tone she could not identify behind its normal lilt.

"_Manners and formality will not carry you everywhere in life. Heed this warning and learn to rely on those you must trust with your very lives. Conflict is not the meaning of life. Fighting will only carry your ambitions and dreams so far. There is always a time for alternative decisions. That being said, I cannot allow you to pass unscathed, nor can I kill you where you stand. My previous assertion shall remain true. The gods shall follow in your shadows and judge you as they see fit. That is my condition, and you may now pass through this mountain safely._"

Hiroko finally lifted her head to see the tengu, one arm and one wing outstretched towards the mountain ahead. Her heart had burned in her chest when she heard its verdict. A great dread filled her mind and body, so overwhelming that she couldn't bring herself to stand. Kawasaki recovered first and helped her up, keeping his head bowed as he wandered backwards to retrieve Takamura, who evidently hadn't fled far.

_ What an ominous blessing,_ she thought. She would rather not be blessed by the gods at all, but she supposed they had to pay for their lives in some way.

The three students continued on to the shrine, pulled a few coins of yen from Kawasaki's pocket, and advanced into the forest beyond. Hiroko half expected creatures to attack or for some accidental misfortune to befall them, but nothing happened even after they hiked quite a ways up into the mountain. No one spoke or even tried to glance at each other for more than a few seconds. The two boys had stopped fighting temporarily and Hiroko remained between the two so that one couldn't see the other.

The Blight ended and they survived - with a dreadful sentence over their heads. Hiroko had trouble sleeping that night, and her roommate must have asked what was wrong at least ten times before she fell asleep. None of her relatives had ever told her what to do under these circumstances. She hadn't anticipated that the advantage she had held over the other students would fade away so easily, with a worse condition to make matters even more dire.

Hiroko couldn't have known how that curse would affect any of them. She didn't even try to understand it, although the thought tormented her for an entire week afterwards.

When Makoto returned from the Blight, he had to listen to Kasuga's incessant chatter all the way across campus as they made their way to the front office. They had to see someone about his sacrificed shoes, but it was Makoto's luck that none of the staff had even arrived yet, aside from the cooks and janitors. He had no idea who among the small group of people he had met survived this Blight, and Kasuga seemed insensitive enough to not care when he mentioned it.

There were people like Morioka and Kawasaki who already knew what to expect from this school and people like Makoto and Takamura who were completely new to the whole thing. He had expected people like him to have a low survival rate, pessimistic as it might have seemed. Not that he wished to die a horrible and painful death at the jaws of a monster, but it made enough sense to him. His barrier didn't even last that long against the first creature they had fought.

There was nothing weird about considering your own death when life was such a precarious thing in this school. Some people even wished for a quicker end, opting for suicide opposed to this endless chain of suspense and fighting. He had no idea what Kasuga thought of the whole ordeal. For all Makoto knew, Kasuga was as informed as Kawasaki and Morioka were, but somehow he doubted it. He just couldn't find any trace of the same knowledge that Kawasaki possessed, despite his cheery personality.

The boy next to him had finally shut up and was now sitting next to Makoto with his arms crossed and feet kicking the air like a petulant child. Whatever he had been talking about had no effect on Makoto, who had failed to hear a single word. He seemed like he wanted to talk some more, but for some reason was deterred. Makoto didn't think he had figured out the obvious hints he had been trying to send across the small space between their chairs. He had to wonder what distracted Kasuga, but wasn't willing to ask.

"Do you think they'll give me some dead guy's shoes?" he suddenly asked, his head shooting up to stare at the wall plastered with posters organized in neat rows. Makoto narrowed his eyes and shrugged. He had a feeling that was not what Kasuga had really wished to say. It seemed to be one of his spontaneous outbursts to fill in the quiet, a moment of whimsy.

"Well, they probably have a lot of those laying around…" Makoto pondered. Kasuga nodded, but surprisingly did not wince at the thought. He simply went back to kicking his feet back and forth. He was certainly a strange guy. Makoto thought that he would never see a serious Kasuga, just as he had wrongly assumed on the first day that Kawasaki was one of those purely happy people. Well, he supposed that no _truly_ happy person existed, so that train of thought was invalid.

"Hey, is Nozawa-san ever normally like he was at the festival? You were a lot more fun then," Kasuga said bluntly, oblivious to Makoto's dubious look. He didn't even know that he was being rude, it seemed. Nothing about his appearance or voice said otherwise. That was always the worst. Makoto, for all his talk about the government and how people were so ignorant and oblivious, hated getting angry at people who didn't even realize that they were so annoying. It just made him look like a jerk.

"Yeah...I'm not; sorry to disappoint you. That was a one time thing." It had only been because Makoto wasn't quite sure whether or not he would survive the next Blight. Even he had wanted to have a little bit of unrestrained fun before he left the world. It hadn't mattered that day because everyone had let loose in the celebrations.

When the staff finally arrived, Kasuga went to talk to the secretary and Makoto took the opportunity to flee from his influence. He stepped outside and managed to find his classmates without much trouble. What did trouble him was Kawasaki's silence and the completely wrong aura surrounding him. He didn't talk and continued to stare forward at nothing, only occasionally nodding or shaking his head to the outside world. He seemed concerned over some invisible thing, but he was not anxious.

It was weird. Something had happened in that other world. Honda tried to ask around, but she couldn't figure out who his partners had been and Kawasaki wasn't in a talkative mood, for once. Morioka seemed confident that they had survived. Otherwise, she explained with a pointed glare at the prone boy, none of them would have been allowed to leave with their lives. Kawasaki was certainly alive. Just to be sure, the girls made Makoto take his pulse.

It was a strange thing - having something bad like this happen so early. It almost felt as if a classmate of theirs had been tragically struck by a car in a traffic accident or if one of their parents had died. Makoto thought that this situation had that type of surreal air to it. No one could quite believe this was happening and no one knew how to react. He could recall a faint memory from grade school of a classmate and some tragedy, but he couldn't remember exactly what had happened.

This wasn't much of a game anymore. The first day had been surreal in a different manner, a completely different world than any they thought to exist, something straight out of a manga series. Today, though, was a different type of surrealism. Today they had been thrust into a cold, bitter reality while their minds remained trapped in the past, still clinging to the fantasy that the situation had created. In this world, people were hurt and died. Some people were irreparably inflicted with the deepest sorts of wounds that no one could see.

"Did his roommate survive?" Makoto asked as he knelt down next to the edge of the water fountain where Kawasaki had reappeared from the Blight. He hesitated in placing a hand on his shoulder, a gesture meant to be comforting, but Makoto had trouble with comforting others. He decided against it and rested his fingers lightly on the cool stone ledge. "How many died, anyways?"

It took a moment of collaboration with the students running past to figure out how many had not returned from the Blight alive. Their bodies would never return to this world, so the usual staff who counted the bodies and took them away in trucks were gone. No one knew for sure how many had survived the first day, either. Morioka returned with his answers. She didn't look too disturbed, but then again, it was hard to tell what that girl was feeling at any given moment.

"There're about fifteen dead. Kawasaki-san's roommate is still alive, it seems, but no one knows where he is right now. They said that his name is Natsume. Someone over there knows where his room is, though." Morioka pointed to a small cluster of students nearby. Some were crying, still stunned by the ordeal despite the fact that no one would have seen anyone die. According to Morioka, either all three teammates survived or none returned alive.

That was what perplexed the group of teens. Kawasaki's teammates had to have come back, so no one could understand what the problem was. Morioka had mentioned the fact that no one could bargain with the tengu. Apparently Honda had learnt how to handle the situation from Kawasaki himself. Had he not taken his own advice? Maybe it had been his teammates' faults. That was quite likely the more Makoto thought about it. Kawasaki could get on anyone's nerves if they weren't of the same state of mind like Kasuga.

It was still a mystery until the boy decided to speak.

Makoto sighed and maneuvered his arm around Kawasaki's back, gently pushing him to his feet and urging him on with logical words. He complied easily, although walking was a bit of a problem. Honda could find nothing physically wrong with him and he didn't feel like trudging all the way to the infirmary, so they figured it must be a purely mental issue. Perhaps even if they had been hurt in that world they wouldn't have had any physical wounds. There was no way of telling.

"Come on. You get along with your roommate, don't you? When he gets back he can take care of you. I heard that he survived. You can rest when you get to your room, so please cooperate and move," Makoto said to the despondent boy. He nodded in reply, but Makoto wasn't sure if he was paying attention.

It took approximately ten minutes for him to coax Kawasaki into giving him the room key. He wasn't about to go rummaging through the boy's pockets to find it, given his current state of mind. Makoto would never have done something like that regardless of Kawasaki's state of mind. It was frustrating, though, and by the time he opened the door he was ready to just toss Kawasaki in and leave. To his consternation, there was no one in the room.

"Where's your roommate?" Makoto muttered angrily as he glanced at the nameplates outside the door. "His name is...Natsume Ryo. Does he normally get back late or something?"

To his surprise, Kawasaki nodded and moved to the closet in the first room. His roommate probably stayed in the other. The boy had a little more life now, his eyes less foggy and distant as he shifted through the clothes for his nightshirt and pants. He opened his mouth a bit every now and again, but seemed unable to form words. Makoto watched from the door, leaning against the wall and feeling very much out of place. He wanted to leave, but felt obligated to stay.

After Kawasaki had pulled his nightclothes on and brushed out his auburn hair, he slumped against the desk chair and stared at his hands.

"Will you be alright now?" Makoto asked. Kawasaki lifted his head a little and hesitated, opening and closing his mouth.

"I'll...I'll be okay. Thank you," he said in a soft voice, a tired voice that just seemed to want sleep. "Sorry that I worried all of you."

Makoto shook his head on the way out. "It was a long day."

* * *

- Continuation of the last chapter. The next Blight will take down more of their shrinking numbers. We meet some new students and get to know others a little better.


End file.
